درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

As a negative consequence of COVID 19, almost all students felt obliged to leave the universities and use electronic devices to learn. Some universities encouraged faculty members to use Electronic teaching as an alternative to traditional classrooms. Despite a large number of studies on different forms of electronic learning, the effectiveness of synchronous and asynchronous E-learning in teaching grammar to EFL learners has been neither investigated nor compared appropriately. Two intact  classes of undergraduate students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) from Farhangiyan university were selected. and each received the treatment through either synchronous or asynchronous E-learning activities. The same syllabus consisting of dependent Clauses, Appostive, infinitives, and gerunds were taught to the two groups. EFL learners’ knowledge of grammar was  measured by recognition and production tests.  The two groups’ scores were submitted to repeated measures ANOVA tests. The findings showed that both modes of E-learning greatly influenced the language learners’ knowledge of grammar as measured by recognition and production tests. Results also showed that the interaction between electronic modes and grammar recognition and production tests was statistically significant. Therefore, it could be concluded that E-learning learning is useful, synchronous learning is more effective for improving the language learners’ production, and asynchronous learning is effective for improving the skills and subskills which require reflection and comprehension.  

The present study was primarily aimed at investigating how Processing instruction would affect the Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical knowledge and how the effectiveness of this method would be modulated by the learners’ individual differences in grammatical sensitivity. To this end, three senior intact high school classes were selected and randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group. Each of the experimental groups was treated with one operationalization of Processing instruction, namely, full PI (n=24), and Structured input (n=24) while the control group (n=20) received traditional output-based instruction (TI) on the English passive structure over three weekly sessions. The results illustrated that Processing instruction was more effective than TI since it improved learners’ both interpretation and production while TI only could improve learners’ production. Additionally, the results demonstrated that the positive impact of Processing instruction was not affected by the learners’ differences in grammatical sensitivity. All in all, this suggests that as long as a grammatical structure is affected by an underlying processing problem, Processing instruction is possibly a more effective pedagogical option compared to traditional output-based instruction. Furthermore, Processing instruction seems to work for all learners irrespective of their differences in terms of grammatical sensitivity.

To explore the effectiveness of flipped instruction in influencing second language learning outcomes, the current research investigated the contribution of flipped classrooms of an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) writing course to Iranian learners’ writing development and writing motivation. In so doing, two intact classes were chosen as the participants (N=43) of this research and they were randomly assigned to a Control Group (N = 18) and an Experimental Group (N = 25). During one semester, the Control Group underwent the traditional writing instruction, while the Experimental Group received a flipped writing instruction. Second Language Writing Motivation Scale (SLWMS) and two timed writing tasks were given to gather the required data. The results demonstrated that the flipped method of teaching was substantially effective in improving the L2 writing performance of the experimental group ( F = 22.20, p = 0.000, partial eta squared = 0.35) . Also, the results indicated that the flipped instruction had a statistically significant effect on learners’ writing motivation ( F = 51.67, p = 0.000, partial eta squared = 0.56) . The findings have remarkable implications for L2 writing methodology.  

The quality of students’ relationships with their peers plays an important role in developing their academic achievement. The present study aimed at constructing an accurate, reliable, and valid instrument that could assess the EFL students’ perceptions of peer support. The instrument includes different subscales, namely Informational Support, Emotional Support, Instrumental Support, Feedback, and Companionship Support. The Peer Support Questionnaire was administered to 212 Iranian undergraduate EFL students studying at two public universities in Iran. An exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis were conducted, and the overall factor loading estimates indicated a quite satisfactory level of convergent validity for the developed Questionnaire. Both the degree of factor loadings and the construct validity test supported the convergent validity of peer support factors and their related items. The findings demonstrated that PSQ could be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the concept of peer support in both academic and educational settings.

In an attempt to contribute to the ongoing debate about how output tasks affect noticing of linguistic forms, the present study set out to investigate the effect of pushed output tasks on grammatical accuracy in sentence writing of Iranian EFL learners. Fifty homogenous Iranian EFL learners were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. Then, every group underwent ten different treatment sessions. The control group received writing instruction through conventional methods, while the experimental group received instruction through two pushed output tasks. In the case of the experimental group, in the first five treatment sessions, four grammatical structures were presented through picture cued tasks. The next five treatment sessions directed at other structures took place via reconstruction tasks. Two different versions of the writing section of the Preliminary English Test (PET) were used as pre/post-test. The results indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group. Therefore, it might be argued that pushed output-based tasks had a positive effect on the Iranian EFL learner’s grammatical accuracy in sentence writing. These findings provide empirical support for the output hypothesis and have pedagogical implications for the choice of output-oriented grammar tasks.

این پژوهش بر آن بود تا به بررسی موضوعی و روش پژوهش مقالات چاپ شده در هفت مجله زبانشناسی کاربردی از سال 1980 تا 2019 بپردازد. بر این اساس، 3491 مقاله از این هفت مجله استخراج شد. روش پژوهش این مقالات بر اساس سه روش پژوهش کیفی، کمی و تلفیقی دسته بنده شد. برای بررسی موضوعی این مقالات چارچوبی که شامل 10 موضوع از جمله آموزش، مدرسان، ارزشیابی، یادگیری، فراگیران، محتوا، هویت، آموزش زبان و تکنولوژی، انگلیسی برای اهداف ویژه و منظورشناسی و کلام بود مورد بررسی قرار گرفتند. نتایج نشان داد از سال 1980 تا 2000 روش کمی به صورت ویژه مورد استفاده قرار می گرفته است اما از 2000 تا 2019 روش پژوهش کیفی رشد داشته است. همچنین نتایج نشان داد که از سال 2010 تا 2019، پژوهشگران به استفاده از روش پژوهش تلفیقی علاقه مند شده اند. نتایج همچنین نشان داد که از سال 1980 تا 2019 بیشترین موضوعات درمورد یادگیری، فراگیران و محتوا و کمترین موضوعات هویت و انگلیسی با اهداف ویژه بوده است. نتایج این پژوهش می تواند به پژوهشگران حوزه زبانشناسی کاربردی و به طور ویژه پژوهشگران کم تجربه کمک کند تا دانش خود را درمورد آنچه تاکنون در حوزه زبانشناسی کاربردی انجام شده است تقویت کنند تا بهتر بتوانند تمرکز پژوهشی خود را ایجاد نمایند.

پژوهش حاضر به بررسی خطاهای فارسی زبانانی که انگلیسی زبان خارجی آنها است در تولید عبارات موصولی زبان انگلیسی پرداخته است. باوجود آنکه در زبان انگلیسی، استفاده از ساخت پرسشی در اغلب عبارات موصولی بدون هسته مجاز نیست، فارسی زبانان به وفور از این ساختار در جملات انگلیسی خود استفاده میکنند. طی این پژوهش، ریشه های احتمالی این خطا شناسایی و تحلیل شدند و نهایتا فرضیه نشانداری تمایزبخش که قدرت بیشتری در توضیح این خطا داشت به عنوان چارچوب نظری این پژوهش انتخاب شد. پیکره شفاهی و کتبی این پژوهش طی دو سال از منابع متعدد و از 137 مشارک خانم و آقا به دست آمد. داده ها از گویه هایی که به طور طبیعی، نه با هدف این پژوهش، بیان شده بودند جمع آوری شد و شامل 126 عبارت موصولی خطادار بود که 85 عبارت (67.46%) بدون هسته معمولی، 25 عبارت (19.84%) هسته دار و 16 عبارت (12.69%) بدون هسته آزاد بودند. بررسی دقیق تر داده ها منجر به شناسایی تمایز نظام مند بین خطاها در دو نوع عبارت موصولی اصلی (بدون هسته در جایگاه فاعل یا مفعول) و دو نوع عبارت موصولی فرعی (بدون هسته در جایگاه فاعل و دارای فعل بودن ) گردید. این وسعت کارکرد عبارات موصولی در زبان انگلیسی نسبت به فارسی، می تواند موجب نشانداری این ساختار برای فارسی زبانان شود. به نظر می رسد این نوع نشانداری که ناظر بر گستره کاربرد جملات پرسشی و خبری در جایگاه عبارات موصولی بدون هسته است بیش از نشانداری از حیث تفاوت در تعداد واژگانی که در فارسی و انگلیسی برای یک کارکرد واحد وجود دارد، می تواند علت بروز این نوع خطا را توضیح دهد. پژوهش حاضر، بر ضرورت بررسی زبانشناسانه سایر ابعاد خطاهای نظام مند مشابه، همکاری متخصصان زبانشناسی و آموزش زبان دوم/خارجی در شناسایی و رفع مشکلات یادگیری، و پژوهش های بیشتر برای ارایه راه حل های آموزشی برای چنین مشکلاتی تاکید می نماید.

In educational psychology, mindsets refer to a set of core beliefs about intelligence and its role in successful learning in a specific domain. This study investigated the extent to which, the EFL learners’ mindsets might predict their English achievement considering the mediating roles of engagement and self-regulation. The data were collected by means of three questionnaires: The Language Mindset Inventory (LMI), the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI), and the Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), as well as the institutes’ reports on their English achievement. We analyzed the data quantitatively using the SPSS 20 and Amos 8 Software. The results revealed that there was a significant direct relationship between language mindsets and English achievement of the EFL learners. Besides, this relationship was significantly mediated by the learners’ engagement and self-regulation. Drawing on the findings of this research, the challenge for teachers is to cultivate in students the mindsets that emphasize growth and potentials rather than constraints and stagnation.

The current study aimed to explore the nature of discursive strategies academics would use to share their specialist knowledge to both specialists and non-specialists. To this end, a corpus of 40 academic research articles and 40 popular science articles were randomly selected from the archive of four English international peer-reviewed journals and four English popular magazines and newspapers in the field of Nutrition. Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), a discourse framework to examine evaluative and/or persuasive language, was used to analyze the data. The results revealed significant areas of similarity and difference in terms of certain discursive elements leading to discernible degrees of persuasion. The findings imply that in order to develop a scientifically literate society, scientists should appeal to diverse discourse resources to provide the public with their findings in an informative and entertaining way. The results of the study carry some pedagogical implications for EAP courses held in EFL settings since being able to both comprehend and produce scientific texts of different professional levels at international scale seems to be a requirement for the future scientists.

This meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the effect of 22 primary studies which have been conducted to test the effect of the integrated skills approach (ISA) on language skills and components. Three questions guide this analyses: What is the overall effect of ISA on language skills and sub-skills? To what extent moderator variables such as learners level of education and proficiency modify the effect of the ISA? What is the magnitude of publication bias in this analysis? The overall effect size was found to be 1.18, which represents a large effect size based on Cohen, Manion and Morrison’ (2007) scale. The results of moderator analysis revealed that the ISA has the largest effect for advanced learners and at a tertiary level of education. The symmetrical funnel plot together with fail-safe N test shows that publication bias does not have any significant effect on the effect size reported in this study. The findings of this meta-analysis have clear implications for practitioners, policymakers, and curriculum developers.